Features

What's in the Box

(1) powergrip replacement Pressure Plate

(1) 900/300 Series Clutch Disk

(1)Throwout Bearing

(1)Clutch Alignment tool

Product Description

RAM Powergrip Mustang Clutch Kit
If you are regularly running drag radials on your Mustang, regardless of power level, the RAM Powergrip is for you. It is a "dual-friction" type clutch & features the 300 series organic facing on the pressure plate side of the disc & the 900 series friction material on the flywheel side of the disc. It offers up to a 500 rear wheel horsepower handling capability without breaking your leg with a hard pedal.

The 300 series friction material is a premium organic lining that is bonded to a steel backing that allows for the highest rotational strength available along with better heat dissipation. The 900 series friction material is comprised of a sintered iron construction & offeres a high coeficient of friction while still allowing for some slip for the clutch to engage smoothly. Some chatter may be evident in street driving. Each Mustang Clutch Kit includes a higher clamp load pressure plate, 300/900 Series friction disc, Release Bearing, & an alignment tool. The 1986-1995 TKO option features a 26-spline hub compatible with the input shaft of the Tremec TKO series transmissions. These clutch kits have a 30 day warranty! The use of a billet steel flywheel is required with these clutch kits. The use of an aluminum Quardrant with an adjustable clutch cable is required with these clutch kits.

***NOTE: can be used on 82-85 applications if 86-95 flywheel is used.***

Mustang Clutch Kit Buyer's Guide for RAM Clutches

Mustang Clutch Installation (79-04 Fox Body & SN95)

Ford Mustang Clutch Tech Info (Fox 79-93)

Check out our YouTube channel for even more tech tips, installation videos, how-tos, and more. The best place to go for anything Mustang related!

Published on 2011-04-30Ram offers a wide selection of Mustang performance clutches, flywheels and accessories. They also provide Stang community with high quality factory replacement clutches as well. So whether you need to keep a stock clutch feel or need a solution for the drag strip, Ram Clutches has you covered. See the Buyer's Guide below for more details.

Published on 2013-10-25Is the clutch in your Fox Body or SN95 Mustang slipping or making some awful noises? Then it is time to tackle the Mustang clutch replacement project! With the help of LatemodelRestoration.com, selecting the correct clutch, clutch components and installing your new clutch doesn't have to a major headache. We have plenty of tech articles to help you diagnose those all too common clutch problems and issues (see them below). We also have this clutch installation video to help you with your replacing your worn out clutch in your Stang. If at any point you still feel a little lost, you can also call any of our Mustang Enthusiasts customer service reps at 1-866-507-8871.

Installing your new clutch will require roughly a full day from start to finish. Follow along in this video as Jmac walks you through all the major components of this project. Don't forget we have all the most popular clutch kits such as Ram and Exedy Clutches. We also have all the driveline components you need to finalize the installation. These include clutch cables, quadrants, firewall adjusters, flywheels, aluminum driveshafts and hardware.

Published on 2014-10-13Are you stuck deciding which clutch is the right one for you? No worries, we cover just about every detail there is to consider when purchasing a clutch for your Mustang!

In this video we discuss the differences between your 'stock' replacement clutch all the way to a horsepower hungry Stage 3 . A lot of thought goes into purchasing a clutch, so we simplified things to help you make the right decision!

Founded in 1971, RAM Clutches has been producing the world's top performing clutch kits and flywheels for street and track driven Mustangs. Each component is developed, improved, and produced in-house to provide the highest performance at the best value. Every RAM product incorporates critical features that are absent from many of the products of those who choose to compete with them.

What is absent on RAM's program is the mythology and hype masking the deficiencies of products produced by others. If you're not viewing this video on latemodelrestoration.com, click below for more information on RAM Clutches.

JONATHAN MCDONALD: If you've ever wondered if you could put a clutch in your Mustang, yes you can. And we're going to show you how to do it right in your driveway. Of course, we're going to be on a lift, just so we can film it a little better. But you will need average mechanical skill and a pretty good selection of tools.

Also, beyond your new clutch kit, you're going to either want to have your existing flywheel resurfaced or pick up a brand new one. Couple other things to keep in mind. Depending on the mileage of your car, you may want to go ahead and pick up a new clutch fork, a new pivot stud, new flywheel and pressure plate hardware, a new rear main seal, and a new transmission output shaft seal. If your Mustang is rocking a T5, well, then you probably want to go ahead and upgrade to a steel bearing retainer as well. Follow along. We're going to get started with the disassembly.

Disconnect your battery. Remove the shifter boot and remove your shifter handle. Make sure the transmission is in neutral and the parking brake is off with the car chopped. Jack up the car and support the jack stands.

Mark the drive shaft and pinion flange for orientation, and remove the four drive shaft retaining bolts. Slide the drive shaft out of the car and plug the transmission tail shaft seal. Remove the catback-to-midpipe hardware. Unplug and remove the O2 sensors, if equipped, and remove the two midpipe-to-header retaining nuts per side. Disconnect the smog tube, if equipped, and remove the midpipe from the car.

Remove the clutch cable from the clutch fork. Pull the bell housing-to-cable retaining clip and slide the cable free of the bell housing. Unplug all electrical connectors from the transmission. Remove the speedometer cable and position it out of the way.

Leaving the bolts engaged, remove the two cross-member retaining nuts. Support the transmission with a jack. Remove the four transmission-to-bell housing bolts as well as the cross-member bolts.

Lower the jack and slide out the transmission. Grab some help if you need it. The transmission isn't heavy, but it is awkward.

Remove the two starter retaining bolts and slide the starter out of the way. Remove the two lower block plate bolts, and then remove the six bell housing-to-block bolts. Remove the bell housing from the car. Here you can see the reason our clutch failed was one of the disk hub damper springs relocated itself.

Remove the six pressure plate bolts hanging onto the pressure plate so it doesn't fall on you. Pull the pressure plate and disk off the flywheel. Looks like the disc hub broke, allowing the spring to come free.

Remove the six flywheel retaining bolts, holding onto the flywheel so it doesn't fall, and remove it from the engine. Pull off the block plate. Thoroughly clean everything for inspection.

With everything taken apart, now's the opportunity to slow down and thoroughly inspect everything. Pay close attention, because I'm going to walk you through everything that you're going to want to take a close look at.

Start out with your input bearing retainer on your transmission, especially if it's a T5.' If it's stock, it's probably worn, has several grooves in it, and you'll want to go and upgrade it to a steel bearing retainer. Ours has already been done sometime in the past, and it's still good to go.

Your bell housing spacer plate-- if you notice any wear around the starter hole, through it away, put in a new one. An egg-shaped starter hole will cause your starter bolts to come loose, and you'll probably even have engagement issues between the starter and the flywheel.

Inside your bell housing, thoroughly clean and inspect your pivot stud and clutch fork. If either one needs replacement, replace both. That way you don't have wear issues down the road.

On the back of the motor, take a look at your rear main seal. If it shows any signs of dampness, replace it. All this stuff has to come out to get to it anyway, so you might as well do it now. Same thing with the pilot bearing. If there's any signs of wear, just go ahead and replace it. you. can run up your local parts store and rent you a slide hammer and a pilot bearing tool, and it'll make the job extremely easy.

If your car still equipped with a stock clutch cable and quadrant, it really is time to go ahead and upgrade to an aluminum quadrant and an aftermarket adjustable cable. If you already have an aftermarket adjustable cable and it's got some years on it, and it feels a little bit draggy, go ahead and replace it. It'll make your new clutch feel a whole lot better, and it'll keep you going down the road without any failure opportunity later on.

If your flywheel has a nice hue of purple and blue little check marks all over it, go ahead and chunk it. It's not worth resurfacing, because those spots are now hard spots, and it will not wear evenly, even if you have it resurfaced. If it shows just normal rotational wear, we do have the option to drop it off at a machine shop and have it resurfaced, or you can go ahead and replace it with a brand new unit.

Take a look at all of your hardware. If there are any rounded-off heads, any stripped threads, get new hardware. You don't want to have anything break or strip out on you when you're going back together.

For all you '79 to '85 owners, this is for you. Because this car is an '85, it still had the original 10-inch clutch in it. This is a perfect opportunity to go ahead and upgrade to the 10 and 1/2-inch that would be found in an '86 to '95 Mustang. This literally is just bolting on new parts, as the flywheels are the same diameter and the same bolt pattern, so they'll bolt right onto the crankshaft. You will need a 10 and 1/2-inch clutch, obviously, and you will need new clutch hardware.

The difference is on the '79 to '85, the hardware is standard thread and it has a shoulder on the bolt, and that's what locates the pressure plate. On the '86 to '95 10 and 1/-2inch version, there's actually dowel pins in the flywheel to locate the pressure plate, and it uses metric bolts to retain it to the flywheel.

Once everything is thoroughly cleaned, inspected, and replaced if necessary, now you can go back together with your new clutch. If you're looking for more tech videos for your Mustang or Lightning, be sure to subscribe to latemodelrestoration.com to see everything we have coming down the pipe.

If replacing the rear main seal, simply pry it out of place, clean the area, lightly lube the new seal, and tap it into place, being careful not to damage the lip of the seal on the crankshaft flange.

If replacing the pilot bearing, use a slide hammer and pilot bearing tool to remove the pilot bearing. The center roller of the bearing will come out first. Then reinstall the tool and remove the outer shell. Tap the new bearing into place.

Position the block plate back onto the bell housing dowel pins. Align the flywheel holes. Don't worry-- it'll only go on one way. Install the six bolts using thread sealer and torque to 75 to 85 foot pounds. Quick tip-- you can use a couple of pressure plate bolts and a pry bar as a flywheel holder when tightening the flywheel bolts.

Make sure the pilot bearing has enough grease and spray down the flywheel with brake cleaner and thoroughly wipe it down. Install the three pressure plate locating dowel pins into the flywheel. Apply a very light threadlocker to the pressure plate bolts.

Slide the supplied alignment tool into the clutch disk. The raised part of the disk faces away from the flywheel. Engage the pressure plate onto the dowel pins and loosely install the six pressure plate bolts. Make sure the disk and alignment tool are still centered and torque the pressure plate bolts to 12 to 24 foot pounds in a cross pattern.

Remove the alignment tool. Apply grease to the pivot stud pocket on the clutch fork along with a thin film in the areas that the throwout bearing is going to contact. Slide the throwout bearing into place and apply a very thin film of grease to the face of the bearing and a little to the top of the pivot stud. Engage the fork onto the pivot stud. Reinstall the bell housing and torque the six large bolts to 39 to 54 foot pounds.

Install the two small lower bolts. Apply a thin film of grease to the input shaft and the bearing retainer sleeve. Don't put too much, as you don't want it to sling out and get all over the clutch disk.

Lift and slide the transmission back into place. Support with a jack. Install the two cross-member bolts. Install and torque the four transmission-to-bell housing bolts to 45 to 65 foot pounds.

If you're running just an aluminum quadrant and adjustable cable, run up your adjusting nut against the clutch fork until there's no slack, and then give it a couple extra tightening turns. Run up your lock nut and tighten it down. Test the clutch.

Whenever you push the pedal in all the way, if it doesn't disengage all the way to where you can get it in gear, then crawl back under, loosen up your lock nut, tighten up your adjusting nut a couple more turns against the clutch fork. Tighten your lock nut back up. Try it again. Do that until you get a good pedal feel.

If you've thrown a firewall adjuster into the mix, well, then all you need to do is tighten up your nuts down at the clutch fork and then use the firewall adjuster to make all your final adjustments. Screwing it out away from the firewall will tighten up the cable. Screwing the adjuster in toward the firewall will loosen the cable.

And there you have it-- whole clutch installed. Visit latemodelrestoration.com for many more in-depth videos just like this one.

There are a lot of options for an '82 to '95 five liter Mustang clutches, which can lead to a lot of confusion. But we're going to break it down for you stage by stage. That way you can make a better educated decision on what clutch that you need for your Mustang.

Starting out at the beginning of the spectrum is your state 0 or stock replacement clutch. And it is just that-- a replacement for your stock collection on an entirely stock car. It is not going to handle much of any power routers. It might for a little bit, but it's not going to live a very long life.

The differences in the stock clutch offering revolve around the size as '82 to '85 mustangs came from the factory with a 10-inch clutch. Now besides that overall diameter of 10 inches, you can tell that you've got a 10-inch clutch by the lack of dowel pins in the use of a shoulder bolt like these here allowed to fresh plate to be centered on the flywheel without the use of dowel pins.

It is very common to upgrade those 10-inch clutches to the '86 to '95 style 10.5-inch clutch. Now the 10.5-inch clutch does use your standard pressure plate bolt with a lock washer and three locating dowels to prevent vibration.

Your stock pressure plates are going to maintain an awesome stock-like pedal feel. And the stock replacement disk is going to be fitted with a tense blind hub to make with your factory 10 spline input shaft on your transmission. That's an organic-facing. And the hub is sprung, so you're not going to have any chatter or noise on takeoff.

If you're making more power than stop, step up on up to the stage one. Your stage one clutch is going to give you up to about 400 rear wheel horsepower holding capability. Now that's only on strength tires. This is not the clutch you want to run if you're running drag radials or sticky tires like slicks at the track. This is an excellent upgrade street clutch.

The pressure plate does have a higher clamp load, which means that the pedal effort will be a little bit stiffer than a stock replacement. Your disk is going to be able to be fitted with either a 10 spline or 26 spline hub. That way it'll mate with either stock type transmissions or aftermarket performance transmissions like the Tremec TKO 600 or the Magnum T56.

The hub is sprung, so you're not going to have the chatter. And it does maintain an organic-facing for good engagement capabilities, but the organics are a little bit more aggressive and as part of the extra power handling.

If you're making more than 400 horsepower, or you've run at the strip, where slicks are drag radials on a regular basis, making those hard launches, you need to step on over to the stage two. Stage two clutch bumps you up to about 500 rear wheel horsepower holding capability. Your pressure plate clamp load stays about the same as a stage one, but the friction material on the disk is upgraded.

Now you have two different ways this is done. On some clutches you end up with a dual friction style that has an organic-facing on one side and then a puck disk on the other, which would be the flywheel side. You still have a sprung input hub. That way you minimize the chatter. But the more aggressive friction material is still going to chatter a little bit on takeoff, especially with the higher numerically lower year ratios like 355s, 373s.

The disk is available in either a 10 spline or a 26 spline depending on what transmission you're running. Like the stage one clutch, you are going to have a little bit stiffer pedal effort and that should be expected, but it's still going to be reasonable for such a performance clutch.

With the improved friction material on the disk, this clutch is much more capable of handling those hard loads on full launch, on sticky tires at the drag strip. But let's say you're putting down a little bit more power. Let's move on to the stage three.

As far as single disk diaphragm clutches go, your stage three is going to be the big data of the group. Your pressure plate is going to have an even higher clamp load that the stage one or two, and that equals a much harder pedal. You should expect some pretty nasty pedal effort with a stage three clutch.

Your disc is also changing too as it's not a full faced unit anymore. It's your traditional puck style, and it's going to have metallic or ceramic metallic pucks on both sides. It's still a sprung hub, but it has very limited movement. So you are going to get chatter regardless of the application.

The disk is available in either a 10 spline or a 26 spline depending on what transmission you're running. However, if you're running a 10 spline transmission with a stage three clutch, and you have the power to match, you're going to be upgrading soon anyway.

All this being said, your stage three clutch will handle in excess of 600 rear wheel horsepower. It'll handle just about whatever you can throw at it, boosted, nitrous, naturally aspirated for a nasty street strip car, even a dedicated strip car.

Regardless, on a stage two, or stage three clutch, or any clutch for that matter-- regardless of how they stage it or rate the power handling-- if it has metallic or ceramic metallic putts, you want to run a billets steel or billet aluminum flywheel. These clutches are not compatible with cast iron flywheel. They'll chew them up in short order.

Any time you install a new clutch, regardless of the power handling or stage, you'll either want to start out with a brand new flywheel or have your existing flywheel turned, so you're working with a flat mating surface, and the clutch can brake in the way it needs to.

That moves me on to braking. Sometimes, you'd have people telling you to drive 500 to 1,000 miles street driving-- certain sequences to go through to break in the clutch. Pretty much by the time you get out of your driveway, the clutch is broke in.

But personal preference, I still drive around for about 100 miles in an in-town driving situation with a lot of stop and go. That way I know for sure that the disk has mated well with the flywheel and the pressure plate.

All of your clutch kits are going to include at a minimum a new throwout bearing or clutch release bearing and an alignment tool. Some of them even include a new pilot bearing. To pick up any clutch for your Mustang, you need to check out latemodelrestoration.com

Community Q&A (3)

Do you sell just the clutch disk? does will work with the pressure plate (this same model but 10 splines kit PN: ram-98794)I do have the 10 spline ram-98794 clutch/pressure plate kit installed (2months old) and Im thinking about upgrading my T5 to a 26 spline input shaft transmission and I was wondering if you guys sell just the disk and if both pressure plate are the same. ThanksAsked by Javier B.from Hialeah | December 28, 2014 | Comment10

Best Answer:No we sure don't, you might be able to pick one up from Ram directly.Answered by Eddy D.from Lorena | December 29, 2014 | Comment00

I've experienced no chatter so far with this clutch. It grabs strong, but not too strong that you can't drive smoothly. It also has excellent power holding capabilities. For the money, its a hard clutch to beat.

Yes, I would recommend this item to a friend!

Was this review helpful to you?

Strong Clamping

By
John G. on
2/17/2014

This Clutch Has Plenty Of Clamping Load For 325RWHP And 365RWTQ And Not Hard On The Leg. I'm Anxious To Throw 500RWHP And 500RWTQ At It This Summer. I Don't Foresee It Having Any Problems

Yes, I would recommend this item to a friend!

Was this review helpful to you?

Great feel.

By
John R. on
7/7/2014

Smooth when I need it to be (Parking) but plenty of Kung Fu grip when I need to get on it. Nice combo for a daily driver.

Vehicle Applications

About This Brand

Ram - Clutches, Clutch Kits, & Billet Flywheels
For over 35 years, RAM has produced the world's top performing competition and street performance clutch systems. They have developed, improved, and produced in house, tried and true clutch components and systems that provide the highest performance value for your Mustang. Today, every RAM product incorporates critical features that are absent from many of the products of those who choose to compete with them. Shop Latemodel Restoration to get performance RAM clutch kits, flywheels, and pressure plates.

Testimonial: The best company I have ever dealt with

LRS hands down is doing everything right. Every experience I have ever had with them shows just what an amazing company they are. There is a reason I come back time after time, instead of going to those "other" mustang aftermarket websites. Customer service is the name of their game, and they are winning. It does not matter whether you call, email, forum PM, or go to the actual store, they are always incredibly helpful and enthusiastic. (Getting to see the Cobra R in their showroom was awesome). I'm proud to have the LRS windshield banner on my car, because I know they will always have my back.